Margaret Bradshaw crouches on all fours on Widdybank Fell in Teesdale, being drenched by sheets of horizontal rain. The 97-year-old botanist mumbles the names of arcane plants as she scours the damp ground.
This part of the uplands is a seemingly empty landscape, heavily grazed by sheep, but it hides botanical treasures that have been here for more than 10,000 years. Some of the plants can’t be found anywhere else in the UK and – until Bradshaw arrived on the scene – many were unaccounted for.
Bradshaw is the chief caretaker of some of the country’s rarest flowers. She has spent seven decades obsessively studying the unique arctic-alpine flora of Teesdale, in the north of England.
In season, these flowers look like jewels, but today they look like tiny collections of leaves. This doesn’t dampen Bradshaw’s enthusiasm, however, and as she describes the plants, she moves her hands like she’s conducting an invisible orchestra.
Where once they were widespread in Britain, now only fragments remain, and 28 species are threatened with extinction.
“Everything about Teesdale is unique,” says Bradshaw with pride – and the authority of someone who has just written a 288-page book on the subject.
Teesdale’s Special Flora: Places, Plants and People was published as part of the Princeton Wild Guides series in February. The “Teesdale assemblage” is celebrated because it is a mix of alpine-arctic flowers and southern European species; nowhere else in Britain do they all grow together.
Now, though, the area’s unique attributes are under threat. Bradshaw has been recording rare plants here since the early 1950s and has witnessed great declines. Her data was the first to prove that – and the need to do something about it.
Bradshaw first heard about Teesdale when she was a student at Leeds University almost 80 years ago. “It stuck in my mind,” she says. “I knew it had a special flora.” She moved to the area, having never been there before, and did a doctorate in botany at Durham University.
After a 20-year stint in Devon from 1980, she returned to Teesdale and found all plants had “decreased substantially”. Since the 1960s, plant abundance has dropped by 54% on average. Some have essentially disappeared, such as the dwarf milkwort, down by 98%, and the hoary whitlow-grass, down by 100% (there is now just one recorded plant). Her data suggests these “shocking” declines are continuing.
Bradshaw sees those declines as British heritage disappearing. She says: “We’ve got various buildings in the country – Stonehenge, Durham Cathedral, and others; if they were crumbling away, there would be groups and money helping stop it, because people would say: ‘We can’t let this happen.’ These flowers’ communities are much, much older, and in some respects they are more beautiful.”
The main reason for the decline of these plants is an unusual one – not enough sheep. The number of sheep on the fells had been reduced by half by 2000, as the uplands were generally believed to be “overgrazed”. Bradshaw says while some upland areas are “sheepwrecked”, reducing grazing on Teesdale has been devastating. Longer grass overshadows the delicate flowers, taking away the light they need to grow.
As a result of her findings and her work with farmers who graze the land – as well as Natural England, which manages it – sheep numbers are increasing and the timing of grazing is being carefully managed. This has led to the partial recovery of some plants.
But the question of other factors looms: the effects of artificial fertilisers; rabbits, which have their own impact on grazing; and the climate crisis, which Bradshaw says she needs more data on. “With climate change, it might all be in vain.”
Bradshaw is committed to working these mysteries out – and is a model for how to live in your 90s. At 93, she set up Teesdale Special Flora Research and Conservation Trust to record rare plants and find people to continue her work in the future. A keen horse rider, at 95 she did a 55-mile (88km) horse trek across Teesdale, raising almost £10,000 for the trust. I ask her the secret to longevity. “Just keep going,” she says. “Keep at it. Don’t sit down and just watch the telly.”
She has little time for messing about. “Read my book,” she quips in response to half a dozen questions she can’t be bothered to answer. She also has thoughts on my driving (“too fast!”) and curtly shushes when asked a question while she is thinking about something else. She says she feels her brain has become like railway tracks with small gaps that need filling, and that can take time.
One of Bradshaw’s biggest legacies is the number of botanists she has taught and encouraged. Getting people to care about Teesdale is essential for fighting to preserve it, she says. It also requires an understanding of what is out there: large areas have still not been surveyed. Mapping is slow, repetitive work, with a botanist surveying plants within one 10-metre by 10-metre grid at a time. At least another 10,000 grid surveys need to be done, experts say. “I recognise I’m getting older and I’ve been trying to get more people to take over and do the records. They don’t believe I won’t be here for ever,” Bradshaw says.
Already she is becoming something of a myth. Pieces online incorrectly say she is the oldest first-time author and that she learned to ride when she was 93. “That’s rubbish,” she says – another favourite phrase. She has been riding since she was five years old, and says she “couldn’t wait” until 100 to publish her book. At this rate, the fragile landscape she has been overseeing is at risk of becoming a myth too.
Despite Bradshaw’s guardianship of this land, and the love and energy she has put into saving it, the future here is unknown. The last words of her book speak to this unrelenting loss. “This is our heritage, this unique assemblage of plant species, mine and yours,” she writes. “In spite of trying, I have failed to prevent its decline, now it is up to you.”
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